Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ Is Not 195 Minutes Long Despite Reports

Brian Welk
·2 min read
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Rumors swirled in recent days that “Civil War,” an upcoming A24 release from director Alex Garland, clocked in at over 3 hours long, at 195 minutes. But despite the reports, Garland’s movie is actually a comfortable 109 minutes, or an hour and 49 minutes, a rep for the studio confirmed to IndieWire.

It’s unclear where exactly rumors about “Civil War” started popping up, but IMDb did at one point reportedly list the film as being “3 hr, 15 min,” according to Variety. It’s been corrected now. A rep for IMDb did not respond to IndieWire’s request for comment.

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While we have no actual objection to a film that would be not quite as long as “Killers of the Flower Moon” in principle, we’re sure many A24 and Garland fans are breathing easy at not having to buckle up for over three hours of political parable and dystopia. The budget for the film was rumored to be in the high eight figures, though IndieWire confirmed its production pricetag as $50 million. That still makes “Civil War” A24’s most expensive in-house production yet.

“Civil War” stars Kirsten Dunst as a journalist traversing the U.S. in a near future in which a number of states have seceded from the union, engulfing the nation in a deadly civil war. “Civil War” also stars Jesse Plemons, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Sonoya Mizuno, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Nick Offerman as the U.S. President. You can check out the first trailer here.

“Civil War” is Garland’s fourth feature following his debut “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation,” and most recently “Men” starring Jessie Buckley, also from A24. Not one of those films surpassed two hours in length either, so “Civil War” is right in Garland’s ballpark. The last A24 movie that pushed three hours was Ari Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid” with Joaquin Phoenix, and that movie struggled at the box office after bringing in just $11.4 million worldwide on a $35 million budget.

Garland’s movie wasn’t the only reason “Civil War” was trending on X on Thursday, as Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was also asked at a campaign event what she believed the cause of the actual U.S. Civil War was. Her answer didn’t go great and took her almost as long to get out of as Garland’s movie was rumored to be.

“Civil War” opens in theaters April 26, 2024.

Ryan Lattanzio contributed reporting.

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